[934] in Humor
HUMOR: WEIRDNUZ.381 (News of the Weird, May 26, 1995)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Fri Jun 16 17:55:34 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 17:51:35 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 18:55:51 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.381 (News of the Weird, May 26, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* In April, radio station KMJ in Madera, Calif., fired weatherman Sean
Boyd. The station said it had a cumulative dissatisfaction with him, but
Boyd said the precipitating incident was his refusal to forecast good
enough weather for the station's annual public picnic in honor of Rush
Limbaugh. Boyd, an 18-year-veteran, had forecast "partly cloudy," which
KMJ executives wanted changed to "partly sunny" so as not to discourage
attendance. [Los Angeles Times, 4-28-95]
INEXPLICABLE
* In October, the U. S. Department of Justice received a check for $5.6
million from the late Stanley S. Newberg, who died without blood relatives
and who had ordered that his estate go to the government as thanks for
having taken his family as immigrants from Austria in 1906. Based on
the 1994 budget, the bequest will cover about two minutes' federal
spending. [New York Times-AP, 10-9-94]
* In March, President Clinton invited sidewalk protestor Todd Ouellette,
27, into the Oval Office for a five-minute meeting. Ouellette had
requested the meeting on February 19, 1993, after returning from a
seven-month walk across the U. S., picking up signatures demanding action
on Vietnam war POWs and MIAs. After a five-minute chat, Ouellette
announced he was satisfied, that he was ending his 25-month protest, and
that he was moving on to other issues, such as the war with China which
"will be coming up around the year 2000." (In a previous interview,
Ouellette said he did not know why he was so obsessed with the POW-MIA
issue, in that he had no friends or relatives who served there.)
[Washington Post-AP, 3-25-95]
* Syracuse, N. Y., fire chief James L. Cummings announced in March that
his firefighters were injured more often in fire station accidents (28
times) last year than in putting out fires (25 times). [Syracuse
Post-Standard, 4-1-95]
* In March, in an all-white neighborhood in Columbia, Pa., vandals damaged
several cars and wrote "KKK" and various racial epithets on the houses of
three families. [Youngstown Vindicator-AP, 3-9-95]
* In February, Odalys Toledo, 30, was sentenced to five years in prison
for attempted bank robbery. Last August, she had telephoned the FBI in
Newark, N. J., and told them that a woman, fitting her own description
and wearing what she was wearing, would soon try to rob the City National
Bank downtown. She was arrested when she later entered the bank. Asked
Toledo's motive, her public-defender lawyer said, "I have no good answer."
[Newark Star-Ledger, 2-23-95]
* In December, the town of Bexley, Ohio, adjacent to Columbus, granted a
permit for a McDonald's on a main street, and construction began despite
much opposition that a fast-food restaurant was not appropriate for the
neighborhood. The opponents said they preferred the site's then-current
occupant, an adult video store. [Albuquerque Journal-AP, 12-28-94]
PEOPLE UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT
* At a press conference in Beijing called in March to announce activities
surrounding China's participation in the United Nations World Conference
on Women, eleven of the 14 winners in the song and poster contests were
male, and eight of the nine head-table convenors of the press conference
were men. [Globe & Mail, Mar95; San Francisco Chronicle, 5-4-95]
* In December, the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in
Wilmington, N. C., made a public announcement that a valuable piece of
technology had been stolen. The head of the office asked the public's
help for its return, and offered a reward, but refused to identify the
object except to say that it was palm-sized. Said the supervisor, "For
security reasons, I can't say what it looked like." [The Observer
(Charlotte, N. C.), 12-5-94]
* Joseph Bertolino, 37, said he has been in severe pain since 1993, when
his arm was pulled into a woodworking machine while he was employed at a
Sierra Pacific Industries mill in Red Bluff, Calif. In April 1995,
Bertolino, distraught with pain, rushed into the mill with a gun and fired
20 shots at the machine, resulting in some dents and chipped paint. [San
Jose Mercury News-AP, 4-23-95]
* James Musgrow, 31, filed a lawsuit in August against the Davenport,
Iowa, police department charging that he was unconstitutionally arrested
earlier in the year. Musgrow had come to the police station to get help
in finding his mother's car but was wearing a black T-shirt with about 30
drawings of marijuana leaves on it. According to the lawsuit, police Sgt.
Dave Holden took offense at the shirt and ordered Musgrow to leave. When
Musgrow insisted on inquiring about the car, he was arrested and charged
with trespass, but the charge was dismissed two months later. [Quad-City
Times, 8-27-94]
2ND AMENDMENT BLUES
* In Salem, Ohio, in January, Robert E. Pugh, 24, accidentally shot
himself in the leg while crawling on the floor of his girlfriend's home
tracking down a mouse he had seen. [Youngstown Vindicator, 1-6-95]
* In New Orleans in May, tourist Freddie Harrison reached into a bag for
his video camera while walking through the French Quarter and accidentally
caused his gun to discharge, killing his 31-year-old daughter. [Columbia
Tribune-AP, 5-3-95]
* In Youngstown, Ohio, in March, Andre Adkins, 23, accidentally shot
himself in the groin when, after firing off a few shots at a target, he
put the gun into his waistband with his finger still on the trigger. And
Al Rodrigues, 24, who had planned to return the gun he had just bought
because he and his wife had decided it was dangerous to have around,
accidentally shot himself in the penis as he stood at the side of a road
in Hawthorne, Calif., in March after supposedly unloading the gun.
[Youngstown Vindicator, 3-28-95] [The Daily Breeze, 4-1-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use
may be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
------- End of Forwarded Message
